Paying for free service?

We have been offering free VPS since June. We first posted on another forum but a member here has shared our offer here and demand has since exploded. Now our free nodes get filled up within a matter of hours. For those who have been lucky enough to grab some of our limited stock, I hope you have enjoyed using it!

We plan to continue running our free nodes for the foreseeable future. So there are no plans to discontinue the service for new or existing users.

We are however considering offering the same VPS, which is normally free, for a small fee. I would be interested in knowing what you all think about this idea.

Comments

Sounds like a good $12/yr Xen VPS to me. Users may probably be concerned about the port speed and bandwidth though. There are lots of those small yearly deals and most come with more bandwidth and port speed.

Hidden_Refuge said: Sounds like a good $12/yr Xen VPS to me. Users may probably be concerned about the port speed and bandwidth though. There are lots of those small yearly deals and most come with more bandwidth and port speed.

We would do it monthly if paying by CarrotPay or BitCoins. Obviously Paypal would be completely pointless, but there are other methods that may make sense.

For 100Mbit I would consider it. Just curious...is the BW so expensive that needs to be limited at 100GB? Nobody offers that low BW...
Anyway yeah 100MBit is much better, 10Mbit is way too low and could easily slow down applications.

sandro said: For 100Mbit I would consider it. Just curious...is the BW so expensive that needs to be limited at 100GB? Nobody offers that low BW... Anyway yeah 100MBit is much better, 10Mbit is way too low and could easily slow down applications.

I suppose we could increase it. Seemed like a nice number to set for the free stuff.

Free plans run on surplus hardware. Typically new (3rd/4th Gen i7s). My thinking was for $1 /month it would basically be the same as the free VPS. We would not put it in the same class as our standard paid VPS line.

Free is free, paid is paid. Even something as cheap as $1.35/year dollarvz or $3/year lowendspirit is still a paid service. Instead of "paying for free service?", the question should be "we want to offer this specs for $1/month, interested?"

The 'paid' services should separated from orders which were actually 'free'. Example - deployed on nodes that only contain this 'paid' services. This could improve service level and customer confidence. However, if you see it as no different, then place them on the same nodes with no differentiation on how it was obtained.

deployvm said: Example - deployed on nodes that only contain this 'paid' services.

The plan is to offer the same service but on separate nodes. We can tweak the service a little to include more bandwidth / data transfer but otherwise the basic package would be the same. But indeed they would be entirely separate nodes.

We have a similar package, with 1GB RAM and 40GB HDD or 10GB SSD. It costs US$7 /month (with LET discount)

Fritz said: I prefer no at the terms of quality. Especially when the paid one is on the same free server, which is pretty bloated atm.

Have there been any issues with quality for the free VPS? What do you consider 'bloated'?
We're talking about Xen VMs (not containers) on nodes that are not oversold. Not to say it is impossible to oversell Xen, and of course resources are ultimately still 'shared' but the major resources like RAM and Disk are dedicated in that fixed resources are allocated to each VM. What more could be expected from a $1 /month VPS?

farsighter said: I believe paying users would also like to have a clearer idea of what you consider 'questionable'-legal usage, in a clear TOS.

Our free users should take note too! Hence we have indeed published an AUP/TOS. Additional restrictions apply to the free VPS. It's amazing how some people refuse to acknowledge the existence of said restrictions, even though they are published on the page where you actually sign up for the free VPS! Then they are amazed when they get terminated. Some get angry then spew abuse for several days via tickets. I'd publish them if it wouldn't be some violation of privacy. Shame

Well, main post hints that those VPS (like existing free ones) will be subject to more restrictions than in company's regular TOS, which are covered under the general definition of 'questionable' usage.
I've just commented that it would be better to make it clearer, that's all.

@farsighter said:
Well, main post hints that those VPS (like existing free ones) will be subject to more restrictions than in company's regular TOS, which are covered under the general definition of 'questionable' usage.
I've just commented that it would be better to make it clearer, that's all.

Read their ToS/AUP plus info on http://vpsbit.com/free-vps.php it is all there. Everything general in their ToS/AUP and additional restriction on the free vps page.

You're not getting my point.
Even their free VPS page is saying "if you think it might not be okay, or you have to ask, it's probably not okay".
I'm speaking exactly about that grey area defined as questionable usage, which paying users should get a better idea of, IMHO.

@farsighter, it is very clear. If you HAVE to ask, its NOT okay. We do not want you to ask, so just assume no. We arent going to write an exhaustive list of what is and is not acceptable. That is unrealistic.

randvegeta said: Have there been any issues with quality for the free VPS? What do you consider 'bloated'? We're talking about Xen VMs (not containers) on nodes that are not oversold. Not to say it is impossible to oversell Xen, and of course resources are ultimately still 'shared' but the major resources like RAM and Disk are dedicated in that fixed resources are allocated to each VM. What more could be expected from a $1 /month VPS?

Why is it such big a deal? He is just asking would you buy a service, which is free NOW in limited quantity, if it were paid with more availability.
If you would buy the "free service" if it goes paid. Nothing oxymoronic about it

So, CarrotPay. I had a look through your site - including the free offer - when I added you to my list of Bitcoin-accepting VPS providers, but... what is this about? It looked extremely complicated, unnecessary and shady.

Why is it being used, what purpose does it fulfill, how can it be 'free' and what is paying for the services?